


Radio Silence

by Zodiac



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Blood, Body Horror, Cecil is a magical boy, Episode: e025 One Year Later, M/M, One Year Later, One big ball of feels pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 07:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3520568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zodiac/pseuds/Zodiac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil had formed a contract years ago to ensure that he actually made it through his internship at Night Vale Community Radio intact and became the new host of Night Vale's news show, the best that it has ever had. Now, he could feel the metaphorical fine print of that contract begin to take hold, despair crushing and squeezing him as he receives news that the most precious thing in his life has just slipped through his fingers forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Radio Silence

“ _Oh_.” There suddenly wasn’t enough air in his studio. His lungs were still pulling in desperate, shaky breaths, but there simply wasn’t enough air. That was what he was going to blame the rapid tunnel vision on, that narrowing of his available eyesight to focus solely on the note he had been handed. It was simply a case of tunnel vision produced by shock, nothing more, nothing less.

The deep purple flashes against the wall of his studio begged to differ, however.

“A truly fearful thing has happened, listeners.” Still enough air to report with, that was one good thing about today. “Carlos, standing triumphantly in the toy-scaled city, was attacked by tiny people using projectiles and  _explosives_ _._ He fell back to the side of the small hole in the pin retrieval area of lane five. _Blood_ … welled through his shirt… and here I am, stuck in my booth,  _useless_ , only able to narrate and not to help.” He had begun crying, but could barely even feel the tears sliding down his cheeks and couldn’t remember when it had started. “He staggered, fell to his knees… so much blood. He collapsed completely.”

He reached a trembling hand up to the headphones he wore, closing it around the pad over his right ear, covering the purple gem inlaid into its surface, not wanting to see its sputtering attempts at reversing what had happened. “Curse this town, that saw Carlos die. Curse _me_.” He squeezed the headphone, nails digging into the soundproof material shielding him from the world outside the bubble his show created for him. “Curse it all.”

He wetted his lips, still trying in vain to fulfill his body’s need for more air than it usually required. Taking his hand away from his headphones and letting it rest palm-up in front of himself, he looked down at the purple gem set into an ornate gold frame, as cancerous with murky darkness as the night sky is cancerous with little, hopeful pinpoints of light that people call stars. “Let us take a moment to… _let us_ … take this moment… Ladies and gentlemen, let us mourn the passing… Can’t…”

“ _I can’t_.”

Anyone still listening in on Night Vale Community Radio at that point heard a barely-audible crack before unending static flooded forth out of their radios.

* * *

 

Carlos frowned down at his phone for just a moment before his eyes quickly darted back up to look out of the windshield in front of him. He was usually a stickler for the rules of the road, but considering how few of Night Vale’s citizens strictly had to drive as well as the… circumstances he found himself in, he figured that occasionally checking his phone while driving to the radio station wouldn’t be the worst thing he ever did.

“Of course the one time that I call him for personal business is the one time that he doesn’t pick up his phone.” He muttered down at the piece of technology perched on his leg as though it was the one responsible for him only receiving the voicemail of the person he was trying to contact. “Cecil makes this big fuss whenever I talk to him about science even when it’s little, basic things that don’t deserve that much excitement, but when I want to see him for something other than science, he can’t find the time to even look at his phone.”

“Still,” His gaze flicked back down to his phone, softening as he looked at the contact information of that wonderfully strange radio host, crowned with a picture of him grinning radiantly that Cecil insisted he take during their meeting over coffee, “I guess I’m being too harsh on him. He has that show of his right now and he would just be unprofessional—as he would put it—if he was to check his phone during it.”

Squaring his shoulders, he focused back on the road in front of him, breaking out into a grin of his own. “Looks like I’ll just have to show up there in-person to invite him out for some personal business. Maybe I’ll persuade him to retake that picture while we’re out and about… A puffy vest with purple and green zebra stripes just doesn’t make for the best photo material…”

* * *

 

When he arrived at the radio station parking lot, a crowd was beginning to gather in front of the main pair of bloodstone doors. Well, it was a growing crowd in Night Vale terms anyway, which consisted of a little over ten people straggling along around the building, shooting nervous looks and even more nervous gossip at one another.

But, even more worrying than the people grouping together like lost, frightened sheep was the fact that the light atop the radio tower, a red beacon that was ever-blinking in the sky above Night Vale as though it were some sort of tiny manmade pulsar, was no longer blinking. It was still there, that tiny, metallic star topping the radio station, but there was no power running through it, leaving it nothing more than a dull grey orb now.

Carlos warily exited his car, taking a moment to lean against the driver’s side door and gently press against the bloodied section of his flannel shirt that covered bandages wrapped around his chest. He had ensured that the bleeding from the wounds the tiny civilization caused stopped before leaving the bowling alley, but his chest was still tender, his body warning him against overexertion lest he wanted those injuries to reopen.

Whatever was going on in the radio station, he had to be careful in investigating it.

And he _would_ investigate it, for that is simply what scientists do, investigate the unknown. So, without any further hesitation, he marched up to the main doors of the station, pressing his blood-stained hand against the doors so that they swung open, granting him entry into the station.

He stepped through the threshold, the heavy bloodstone doors immediately closing behind him again until they were appeased by another blood sacrifice. Around him, the geometry of the building appeared even more non-Euclidean than it usually was with light fixtures bending and flaring out, stairs and support structures twisting back to meet the walls that they originated from, and doorframes warping into hyperbolic and elliptical angles. There was a clock hanging on the wall above the front desk. Now, that clock had been pried open, a grey, pulsating ooze slowly dripping down onto the floor where the clock face now was, the hands still busily ticking along without a power source.

There were so many questions Carlos had zipping through his head. How was this structure holding itself together? How were angles and positions like these even feasible with the building materials? What had happened to make everything be like this? But, the one question that rang out above all the others, that made him move beyond the entrance room was, “Where is Cecil?” All of the current oddities about the station would hopefully stay right where they were until he had a chance to investigate them properly. First, he had to do what he had come here to do—see Cecil. So, burying his scientific curiosity for once in his life, he headed into what he hoped was the depths of the radio station.

On the way, he encountered several other people who he did not recognize. He hadn’t been in the station very often in the past and, from what he heard, Cecil hired new interns frequently, so he was not exactly familiar with the staff around the place. However, those nametags on the peoples’ shirts made them unmistakable, marking them as an intern of the station before then listing their names in a messy scrawl. If anyone would be able to tell him how to get to Cecil, it would be his own interns.

“Excuse me, um,” A pause to quickly glance down and read the name of the intern he was speaking to, “Chad, could you point me in the direction of Cecil? Maybe even accompany me to him, if you have the time? I’m here to see him on personal business and I’m honestly not sure if I’d be able to find him if I kept looking for him on my own like this.”

The intern turned his blank eyes towards him and studied him under that dull stare for a few moments before opening his mouth. But, the only thing that came out was a horrid distorted noise, crackling and screeching in an indiscernible pattern like the auditory equivalent of television static.

Carlos clapped his hands over his ears, one eye scrunched closed in pain from how the garbled mess penetrated deep into his being, the other remaining open to look for visual cues from this intern since he clearly wasn’t going to get any interpretable audio ones from him. Looking at him more closely, his tongue and the entirety of the inside of his mouth had been replaced by the snowstorm effect of white noise, a roving pattern of white and black pinpricks. Chad slowly raised his arm, pointing down a hallway that Carlos wasn’t sure had been there a few moments prior. “Ah… U-um, thank you very much! Uh, could you please stop... talking, if that’s what it is? It’s starting to make my head hurt.”

Still staring at him with that blank gaze, Chad obeyed, closing his mouth and locking away the presence of static.

Breathing out a sigh of relief, Carlos let his hands slip down from his ears and smiled at him, hoping to alleviate some of the awkwardness and overall strangeness of this meeting. “Thanks again! Oh, you might want to get that voice thing you have checked out. Could be throat spiders or something.” With that, he turned towards the hallway, taking in a deep breath before walking towards it.

Whatever was going on in this place, it seemed to affect even the people inside it. Of course, whatever was wrong with Chad could just be normal Night Vale weirdness in effect, or even throat spiders like he said, but his actual hypothesis was much more grim than that. Considering the interns had begun acting odd alongside the station changing, the same force was most likely acting upon them both. And if whatever that force was had already gotten to the interns…

“Cecil!” He yelled out to the empty hallway, suddenly far, far more worried about the radio host that was situated in the middle of all of this change. If it had altered the interns that much, he dreaded to think of how much it may have already changed that wonderfully weird broadcaster of his that he now realized he loved. Being careful not to reopen his wounds, he increased his pace to a brisk jog, wanting to get to Cecil before this malevolent force acted too much upon him.

He would never have guessed that Cecil was the malevolent force working his magic throughout the station.

But then he arrived at the booth that Cecil normally did his broadcasts in and what it had turned into made him stop immediately, head turning in slow, sweeping motions to take in what it had become.

The booth was cavernous now, the glass-paneled walls towering and curving inwards above him, eventually merging into a single point to form the ceiling. Blinking LED lights ran along the edges of each wall, flooding the area with a deep purple light before it slowly dimmed back to darkness. Instead of being able to see through the walls into the control room or outside of the booth, they were opaque in order to let images dance across them. In three of them were visions of the rest of the radio station, all twisting corridors and nonsensical geometry. The fourth one, the one to the right… held an image of him!

Slowly, cautiously, he turned back towards whatever was picking him up and transmitting the picture of his back to the glass and could only see Chad standing stoically behind him… He didn’t even hear the intern follow along after him, much less give any indication that he would be doing so. He stared at the man, at his blank, vacant stare, wondering just how he had managed to do it, but then his own eyes widened in realization, in remembrance. It had been broadcasted on Cecil’s very show, within the first month of his arrival to Night Vale.

“ _To the parents of Chad the intern: we regret to inform you that your son was lost in the line of community radio duty, and that he will be missed and never forgotten_.”

How could he have forgotten the first intern death he had heard about at the station?! Well, he _was_ pretty bad with names and there were so many other things to pay attention to at the time, but that wasn’t the point. Right now, the point was that the Chad in front of him was either a zombie of some sort—unlikely seeing as how he didn’t have even the slightest signs of decomposition—or some sort of carefully-crafted facsimile meant to mislead him. Still, he was the best hope that he had at the moment…

“Chad,” He murmured softly, keeping his voice down to a whisper, “if that’s who you really are… Where is Cecil?”

Again, that arm rose to point, this time straight ahead at the far wall. Carlos turned to follow where it was pointing and his breath caught in his throat, lips trembling and attempting to form a scientific explanation as to what he saw.

Pressed against the wall, covering the LEDs that would have dispelled the darkness that hid it from him, was a shadowy purple, shapeless mass, the shifting form glistening under the dim lighting that occasionally fell upon it. All along its body, solid, milky eyes had bubbled up from beneath the skin like pustules, every one of them tilted in different directions to focus on different tasks. Some were focused on the appendages that it had, long arms that reached tens of feet away from its body to adjust equipment built into the walls and floors. The claw-like fingers at the ends of those arms deftly turned dials and knobs on speakers, adjusted sliders that altered the intensity of the lights, and shuffled through boxes of old records and tapes. Others of those eyes were turning rapidly or crawling across its skin, shifting positions to monitor the equally-shifting walls, focusing mainly on the wall to its left.

Carlos drew in several deep, shuddering breaths, just staring at the creature that was supposedly what Cecil had become. It just couldn’t have been possible… He had just heard Cecil’s voice, so light and lilting and as close to human as that bizarre radio host was just—how long ago was it? A few hours ago, tops? Yes, it was something along those lines.

But now, now Cecil was this… _thing_ that was still dutifully performing his radio duties well enough, yes, but Carlos wasn’t even sure if his voice was still that wonderfully smooth tone that it used to be. Hell, he wasn’t sure if Cecil was even conscious of what he was doing! No, he _had_ to be. Doing all of the things that needed doing around the station was just so… _Cecil_ that there had to be at least a little sliver of his mind left in control.

There just had to be…

Taking one last deep breath, a confident, determined one this time, Carlos marched towards the shifting mass, looking up at what he assumed to be his face. “Cecil!” He called out once he got within a reasonable range of him, cupping his hands around his mouth to ensure that he heard him. “Is any part of you still in there?! Answer me, Cecil!”

Cecil answered right back immediately—in a way. Carlos jumped back as the creature called Cecil rushed towards him with startling quickness, pressing down to the ground and darting towards him in a serpentine fashion. Right in front of him, Cecil skidded to a halt before rearing back up, the light from the newly-revealed LED lights behind him pooling out from around the edges of his form, but not gracing Carlos with their illumination. Unfortunately for him, the meager distance he put between them from the hop backwards was quickly removed as a couple of those wicked hands gripped him, lifting him far above the floor while he struggled in the iron grip. While being raised, he felt one of those damp claws scrape across his chest during his struggles, easily sliding through the bandages wrapped around him and nicking the flesh beneath.

He froze, not only because he could feel hot blood begin to well up from his wounds and flow downwards again, but also from the sight that greeted him once he was pulled up to near the top of Cecil’s head. There, beneath a cluster of those alabaster eyes, was a single mouth, the jagged lips sewn together with a deep red thread.

Staring into those horrible, glazed-over, definitely _inhuman_ eyes, he noticed something there in his reflection in them, something on his cheek. Squinting at it, he could make out a tiny tattoo, maybe, of a purple eye with a pair of rudimentary headphones resting atop it… Strange, that definitely hadn’t been there before he came in here.

However, he didn’t have any time to ponder this new development as Cecil was attempting, and failing, to open his mouth. No matter how much he stretched his jaw this way or that, the string clamping his lips shut didn’t budge in the slightest, making frustrated screeches bubble and die in his throat, unable to properly be freed. This might have been amusing to Carlos, seeing a giant monster struggle to break one of the more fragile materials man has created, had Cecil not also been tightening his grip on him the more frustrated he became over his bonds. He could feel his ribs strain under the pressure, his skin having already given way beneath the sharp nails to let even more of his blood dribble and flow down his body. Thankfully, Cecil soon relented once he discovered that his efforts were futile, relaxing his grip until Carlos was relatively comfortable.

“But then”, Carlos thought, “I really am not fortunate at all here. I am going to die here, one way or another, by the hands of the person I was never even able to confess my feelings to. Whether Cecil can open his mouth to devour me whole or not doesn’t change that at all.” Maybe it was the already severe blood loss becoming even worse making him feel this way, maybe it was just the magics of the place beginning to work their way into him. Either way, he gave Cecil a delirious smile, idly watching as one of his free arms plucked a tape from among the boxes and inserted it into a cassette player.

From among the speakers set about the room came, “ _He grinned, and everything about him was perfect, and I fell in love instantly_.”

Carlos’ smile widened into a grin, a pained mimicry of what he could remember of that grin he gave to the whole of Night Vale that day. His eyelids drooped as the mere effort of keeping them open became too much while more of his lifeblood slowly seeped out of him. Just before he closed his eyes completely and surrendered himself to the heavy fuzziness that had begun gnawing at the edges of his consciousness, he muttered out one last thing,

“I love you too, Cecil…”

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this and wanted to screech at me in a manner similar to socializing, then you can find my Tumblr right [here](http://catsandcomposers.tumblr.com/).


End file.
